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Today, we are going to cover the topic of choosing the right communication style when communicating change. This is something that is a very simple concept, but companies get it wrong so often. If you learn this concept today and commit it to your memory, I promise it will pay off at some point in your career.
Let me start by giving a quick lesson on the change curve. This is the process we all go through when faced by change. Everybody goes through these steps every time. Some people go through the steps faster than others. Even the same person might go through the steps at a different pace for different changes. We did a series on each of these phases, so if you want to dive deeper into the phases, I encourage you to go back and listen to episodes 13-16. Episode 13: Components of Change Management: Awareness Episode 14: Components of Change Management: Desire Episode 15: Components of Change Management: Knowledge Episode 16: Components of Change Management: Ability & Reinforcement Think about a major change that you’ve gone through in your past. When you became aware of the change, how did you feel? You may have felt betrayed or you may have been in denial. Your head was probably spinning with thoughts of ‘what does this mean?” and all of the different concerns you have about the change. Your mind is going 80 miles per hour – with lots of questions. You are in a bit of a fog best case, and you could be really emotional worst case. Because of the state of mind you are in at the time you become aware of the change, the best communication style is an informative one. Just the facts. Keep it simple. With everything else going on in your mind, there isn’t room for a lot of additional information. And, in the event the change is really big, you don’t want to hear a lot of inspirational talk. It will feel insincere. So, at the start of a change curve, communication needs to be informative. As you work through the Desire phase and into the Knowledge phase, you begin to move into what is called Identify Crisis. At this point, your head isn’t spinning about the change and you are starting to understand what your new world will look like, but there are still a lot of unknowns so you are still unsure of your ability to step into the change. During this identity crisis phase, the best communication style is supportive. Communication needs to be softer than just the facts. It needs to give a sense of support for the impact it is having on employees. It should reinforce that the change process is normal, everyone goes through it at their own pace, and that nobody is going to be left behind. It should also be supportive in the literal sense. Provide resources people need to gain knowledge about the change and clearly outline the process they should follow if they need more support. Finally, as you move out of knowledge and into ability, you are starting to gain a new identity. You are searching for solutions about how you will operate in the new normal. At this point, communication should be inspirational. This is when you start to paint a picture of the new world and how much better it will be than the old one. This is the time to celebrate the change. Trying to communicate inspirationally when you first announce a change will fall on deaf ears because there are more immediate needs at that time. But, one everyone has gotten through their initial shock and been able to get a better picture in their mind about how their world is going to change, they will be ready for an inspirational message to help propel them forward with confidence.
You don’t have to be in a position of authority to have an authoritative personality type.
People with Authoritative personalities are generally:
However, authoritative personalities come in different flavors. Understanding these variations can help you better understand how to work with someone more effectively. Authoritative & Creative – they come up with a million great ideas and will inspire others. They have an aversion to routine. You will not be very successful trying to get them to follow a process. Authoritative & Relationship oriented – they are highly attuned to their relationships. They are able to lead teams through change because they know how to collaborate, getting others onboard with the change. Authoritative and Standards oriented – they set high objectives for themselves and expect every step to be met with high quality. They are going to give you the specific details of how they want things done. Authoritative and Quiet - have ambitious goals, but work more independently. They will let their teams work more independently. They are more methodical, and will not spend a lot of energy rallying others to get on board with their ideas.
If you want to be recognized as an employee who positively contributes to your organization, one of the things you need to understand about your company is the basic financial metrics that drive it. But, that is only one reason to familiarize yourself with the finances.
By understanding the financial metrics that drive your company, you will have better insight into the reason decisions get made the way they do and potentially even be better able to look into the future and anticipate change that may be coming. To some extent a company’s culture is driven by the finances that underlay the business. For example, does your company make its revenue by selling something that is relatively low priced to many, many people? Or, does your company sell something relatively high priced and rely on only a few sales per year? In the first case, you have something like Walmart. Millions of small transactions per year to millions of different customers each year. Compare that to something like an architecture firm that specializes in building airports. High price tag, and I imagine only 1 or 2 customers per year even come available. All of the underlying decisions, strategies, and processes for these two organizations stem from how they make their revenue. So, if you want to understand your company better, you need to understand where the revenue comes from. This applies to the cost side of your business as well. What makes up the cost structure of your business? Do you have costs associated with raw materials? How volatile are the costs of those materials? Or, are the majority of the costs related to labor? For example, software companies and professional services organizations have very little costs outside of the people who work there. If you work for an accounting firm and revenue decreases by 25%, the only real way to get savings to offset the lost of revenue is by letting people go. The last thing I want cover in this episode is margin. Margin is defined as revenue minus costs. You can think of it as profit. Understanding the margin that your company achieves will also help you better understand the drivers of your business. There isn’t 1 answer about what a good margin is. For example, grocery stores operate on a 1-2% margin, and that is considered good. Professional Services organizations operate on a 30% (ish) percent margin. By understanding the level of margin, you better understand the size of the tightrope your leadership team is walking when they make financial decisions. Investigate your company’s financials. Get familiar with the drivers of your revenue and costs. Understand the landscape that makes up the financial health of your company. Understand how it impacts you. Understand how it impacts your leadership team and the decisions they are faced with. If you’d like to get a guide to the questions we cover in the episode, sign up for our newsletter here.
Strategy is something that is traditionally left to the C-Suite or other executives. This is a podcast for those who are early in their career or are not interested in leadership positions, so you may think that strategy isn’t important for you to understand. But – you are the CEO of your career, so you do need to understand it. And, one of the things that you should think about is whether or not your company has a strategy that will make it viable in the long run.
What I want to do in this episode is give you another criterion to consider about whether the job you have or are looking at taking in the future is a good fit for you – it is called the inflection point. The inflection point is a point in the future where the fundamentals of the business are going to change. Fundamentals. Meaning, everything the current business is built on becomes obsolete and a whole new set of rules apply. A good strategy will
You want to work for a company that gets this. In addition, you, as an employee, should be able to recognize and accept change that may come if your company is in the middle of executing a strategy to change the fundamentals of the business. Prepare yourself for changes that may come by assessing:
Stakeholder analysis is a good tool to have in your tool belt because it can be used to solve a lot of different problems. Stakeholder analysis is the process of identifying your stakeholders and analyzing them to understand their unique position.
The value of this tool is that it walks you through the process of identifying your stakeholders and their positions in order to make informed decisions. It helps you open your eyes to the different actors in the play and forces you to think about each one as a separate, unique person. Who are stakeholders? For any given situation, stakeholders are anyone who has a vested interest, or a stake, in your process. When you want to get something done, you need to have your stakeholders onboard. In order to do that, you need to understand who they are and how you can best influence them. To do that, you should understand:
If you’d like to get a free Stakeholder Analysis Map, you can sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll give you access to it, and all of our other tools.
Being successful in corporate America means being good at teamwork. You aren’t going to be able to work effectively without basic teamwork skills.
Teamwork is something that you never master, so today, we are going to cover 5 things you can do to improve teamwork. Being Open To new ideas, perspectives, people. When a team is working well, it is because of the openness of the team members to bring their ideas to the table without worrying about any negative consequences. Transparency Everyone on the team needs to be transparent. This is tricky because some people, by nature, are not comfortable with transparency. Teams are transparent when they say what they mean, when they listen to what others have to say, and when they don’t gossip. One Mission Sometimes the mission gets lost because each department has their own objectives. But, every team in a company should be supporting the overall mission of the company. Great teams remember this. Be Inclusive Many companies fall into the trap that they go to the same people over-and-over. You should purposefully include people from adjacent departments to ensure you are getting different perspectives. Accountability Good teams have a culture of accountability. They build into their framework tools that help with accountability because they recognize that it isn’t everybody’s strength.
Getting ready to leave for a vacation, and coming back to work after vacation are usually very stressful. Sometimes you feel like you need a vacation after your vacation just to catch up. In this episode, we cover some tips for how to productively manage the time leading up to your vacation and the day you return from vacation.
The process starts 2 weeks before your schedule vacation: 1. Add an out of office notification to your signature. This is going to alert people to the fact that you are going to be out. It will nudge them to take action on something that they might need before you leave. 2. Review your calendar for the time you are away. Make a list of any deliverables that you need to prepare during your absence. 3. Block time on your calendar over the next 2 weeks to prepare everything on your list. For example, if you have a meeting where you are responsible for preparing and presenting a slide, you would block time on your calendar to both prepare the slide and make arrangements for someone else to present the slide at the meeting. Learn more about Time Blocking from Episode 10. 4. Block an Inservice Day, or half day for the day before you leave and the day your return. An inservice day is when you block your calendar as if you are out of the office, but you are actually working. It gives you the time and space you need to catch up because people think you are still out. 5. If you have the type of job where someone will be covering for you while you are out of office, block time on the calendar for a meeting with them to manage the transition. You should block time for before you leave and when you return. One week before you leave, you will start to: 1. Say no to any new request that comes your way – don’t take on more work when you know you have a hard stop in advance of your vacation. 2. Be extra diligent about your priorities. You are going to go into hyper-vigilant mode. If it isn’t absolutely necessary, it can wait. Some other tips:
At People Move Organizations, we believe that you will be more successful if you are self aware. Knowing your internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions is what makes you self aware, which makes you better at making decisions, interacting with others, and more productive.
Self Control is one aspect of self awareness which we will dive into in this episode. Self Control = keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check. People who are good at self control:
Self control is invisible – it is the absence of drama. 
There are tools that can help you keep disruptive emotions and impulses in check:
Give it perspective Think about your situation in terms of who will die as a result. This really gives you perspective to realize that although you are currently feeling stressed, it isn’t – literally – the end of the world. Recognize your personal filters Something that may be devastating to you might be a great opportunity to someone else. Every situation can have multiple, legitimate responses. Your response may be legitimate for you, but remembering that it isn’t the same for everyone can help you stay composed. Each week, we send out a free guide to the episode. If you’d like a copy, sign up for our newsletter.
Sometimes, when you aren’t being as productive as you want to be, it is hard to put your finger on the reason. Here are some tips that might help you identify what may be holding you back:
What should you not be doing? Over time, we become progressively less productive because we let a bunch of things that have become unproductive take over our time. It was probably serving a purpose when you started doing it, but over time, it lost its value and you’ve just kept doing it because you’ve always done it. Consider what you are doing that is no longer necessary and stop doing it. Are you following your priorities? What are the highest priorities in your life? We call this your North Star List. If you want to be productive, you need to ensure that you are only doing things that support your priorities. As a matter of fact, we’ve even done an episode just about this topic: The Foundation of Productivity is Priorities. Mindset Recognize that mindset can impact your productivity. Have you ever said this: I can’t get everything done, there just isn’t enough time. This is a mindset issue. When I catch myself saying this, I change my words to: I don’t need to get everything done, just the next thing. Take away the power that the thought has over you. Become aware of the mindset that is impacting your productivity.
Productivity is a way of life – not a set of hacks.
You can be a productive member of society and not actually be very productive. In this episode, we are going to focus on the type of productivity that, when you get to the end of your day you know that you worked on the most important things. But, for those of you who are looking for a productivity hack, let me tell you mine: being crystal clear on my priorities. When you know what your priorities are, you are more productive because you spend your time on things that support your priorities. You don’t spend your time on things that don’t support your priorities. In addition to knowing your priorities, you also have to learn to prioritize your priorities. Sometimes, work is the most important priority. Sometimes, its family. The priorities are always changing, and you need to consciously think about which of your priorities are taking the spotlight. North Start List episode |
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